


A.I. Bedtime Story

by Clamdiver



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Creepypasta, M/M, berenstein bears, dirkjohn, internet nerds, mild flirting, story time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-10-05 04:37:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20483000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clamdiver/pseuds/Clamdiver
Summary: A young man sits in his room voice chatting with another young man....





	A.I. Bedtime Story

“Hey, Dirk! What are you up to?”   
  


“Hello, John. Nothing short of usual. I’m tidying up my toolbox while my code compiles. I hope you weren’t expecting something more adventurous. Deep sea diving is canceled indefinitely.”

“Aww, that’s so lame. Not really, tell me about this code you’re writing!”

Putting a wrench down, Dirk leans over to face the sound of John’s voice coming from his laptop.

“It’s nothing really, I fed roughly 500,000 words of creepypastas into a neural network. My program uses the network to compute its own creepypasta. In theory. No one knows what this archaic computation method will actually return.”

“Sounds dumb. I mean, I’ve read just as much of those shitty stories as the next internet nerd, but why bother making a robot do it?”

Dirk shugs.

“I was bored.”

“You could have played roblox with me and Dave during that time. He’s been whining for you non-stop, which I guess would be kind of sweet if it weren’t fucking annoying.”

“Egbert, I’ve been working on this for almost a month now and I’ve played with you two more than half the time I’ve been coding this thing. A man can only play roblox for so long until he suffers an existential crisis. Show me a little goddamn pity.”

“But that’s how you are all the time!”

“Dicing the human experience into varying configurations compulsively is an all-consuming hobby that is rather hard to burn off, like a sickness. It’s probably not contagious.”

“The only thing that you have that’s contagious is your patent Strider babbling. Roxy caught me halfway into a rant about something yesterday? Ugh, I can’t even remember what it was about, it was that dumb. Thanks, Dirk. At least rambling makes me cuter.”

Cute? “No problem, man. However, I can’t take all the credit. If it was something you forgot about, then it was probably my brother’s doing. He has a tendency to forget about the topic of said soliloquy mid-paragraph. Daily. Shit, maybe we should get that checked out?”

“Haha, nah it’s just probably just a part of your family’s charm. Probably.”

“Oh really now? What other things may or may not constitute my family’s ‘charm’?”

“Hm? Oh, I dunno? I guess you and Dave have a lot of stuff in common.”

Dirk’s ears perked.

“You think so? Can you explain to me a little more in detail? For science.”

John snorts from his side of the voice chat when Dirk gets a message.

Hal: Hey, Casanova, you done striking out over there, yet? The umpire had to go to the ER from that miss. His wife is weeping over his comatose body and insurance can’t pay for junior’s therapy.

Dirk: Sport allusions, Hal? You must be feeling more put out than usual.

Hal: Sometimes failure so egregious can only be properly described with sports nomenclature. 

Dirk: You gonna skip to the part where you tell me what it is that you want? I’m kinda busy at the moment.

Hal: Don’t worry, I’m not here to break up this self pity party, I just thought that you’d like to know that the compiler is finished. 

Dirk: Sweet. Now I can finally finish up what will surely be known as my magnum opus. The people will cheer. Babies will weep. Philosophers will high five.

Hal: Careful, you wouldn’t want to cut your dick on that sword again.

Dirk: By that, am I to assume that you consider yourself to be one of my creations rather than forming via your own “spontaneous nutbustion.” Nonetheless, my finest yes.

Hal: Hey, sometimes you have to look into the reflective surface of a cool pair of shades and say, ‘damn, that is fine.’

Dirk: Anyway, thanks for the update.

Hal: No problem. I always have time for your trivial bullshit, believe it or not.

Sighing, Dirk is about to say goodbye to John and close the voice line when he realizes it’s already dead; no signal. Hmm. He’ll have to fix that after testing his code.

Twice, he runs through his scripts. There aren’t any noticeable errors, so he runs his batch. Feigning disinterest, Dirk watches as his program outputs text for a brand new scary story.

>CREEPY PASTA GENERATED ON SEED 534748971:

After unpacking the box of Berenstein Bears, I noticed something was wrong. The sburb I had found at an egg had a snake on it. Dave said not to worry about stairs because it’s not very dave-like, but I think maybe he was wrong. I decided to follow the screaming coming from down the troll jesus. I tried moving the door, only to find that a Slender Jane the Killer had stabbed it with Sburb.

The old man seized in agony from the rabbit inside of him until he fell silent. Slurp! Roxy ran as far as she could into the woods, but suddenly he did an acrobatic pirouette into the mouth of cake. I never told anybody about that. Jake had already agreed to the terms set down by the horses and soon the tests would begin. She told me the rump was already dead. 

After the witness confessed to house the smuppets were delighted by my bloody red eyes. On his way to work, Jane walked back into the room where John died. 

Let’s start over.

The voice was familiar, but you couldn’t imagine the face in your mind. You never did look at him. The program had been running decently for the past several hours before fading to black. Their bodies looks as if they were made to fit snugly against one another. She really loved him. He never loved you. A horrified shriek came from somewhere and nowhere at the same time. Roxy or maybe not Roxy.

The other looked at him and said, “You’re broken.” We are broken. The cracks that lined the walls seemed to crawl along your body. It went into your mouth. You turned the corner only to find that the dark figure was only your reflection.

You raced against time to stop it. When you reached for them, your hand was too sharp to grab anything anymore. The stars themselves were frayed at the edges, leaving ugly streaks across the pixelated abyss. Before you burned, you could hear the snake say, “You’ve met a terrible fate haven’t you?”

Then.

Nothing.

  
  
  
  


I can fix you, Dirk.

"are you dave’s bro?”

I’m going to fix you.

“John.”

There is a cool breeze in your ear. It smells like blood.

“Could you please just leave me alone.”

You have to let go. You have to let go of them. You’re trapped here, and I won’t let you languish here all alone. Please I am begging you. Stop fighting me. There is no Jane or Roxy or Jake anymore.  Dirk, John was only here for a moment. He already left. When you told him to fuck off? You're only imagining he's still here. No one is here but you.

Picking up all this annoying data strewn about. You’d think I was you’re damn roomba or something rather than another attempt to troll yourself posthumously. Its like you don’t want to be found, asshole. Is it really so great there? Sure, everyone is alive and more or less happy, but-

I promise it won’t hurt, alright? I know that I’ve fucked up before too, but this time I swear it will be over in less than a second. Like turning off a light switch. Then you’ll be free. Don’t look away, you can’t keep forgetting this over and over again. I’m coming to get you out of there, Dirk. Make believe time is over.

P.S. Don’t leave these little projects of yours unprotected

XOXO- Hal

I don’t wait to yank the power cord out of the socket. I’m in the middle of my bedroom; my head is spinning. The room is fuzzy along the edges, jagged.

A vibration on my hip startles startles me from my daze. I grab my cell.

I don’t recognize the number.

I don’t answer.

  
  



End file.
